Private education expenditure in a ‘free education’ country: The case of Greece

This paper uses data from the 1988 Family Expenditure Survey to estimate and analyze the private expenditure on education in Greece. Such expenditure amounts to 111,624 million drs per year or 2.1% of total household expenditure. The aggregate expenditure of households is roughly half of what the state is spending on education. The dominant type of expenditure is for foreign languages and private crammer schools (frontisteria). There are sharp differences in private expenditure on education depending on the location of the household (spending in Athens is two-and-a-half times that of small towns and villages), the household's total expenditure, as well as the occupation and educational level of the head of the household. The findings are discussed in the context of the equity and efficiency of current education provision and financing policies.     

Mathematics education as a ‘design science’

Mathematics education (didactics of mathematics) cannot grow without close relationships to mathematics, psychology, pedagogy and other areas. However, there is the risk that by adopting standards, methods and research contexts from other well-established disciplines, the applied nature of mathematics education may be undermined. In order to preserve the specific status and the relative autonomy of mathematics education, the suggestion to conceive of mathematics education as a design science is made.Revised and extended version of the paper Mathematikdidaktik als design science, published inJournal für Mathematikdidaktik 13 (1992), 55–70. I am indebted to Jerry P. Becker, P. Bender, H. Besuden, W. Blum, E. Cohors-Fresenborg, Th.J. Cooney, L. Führer, H.N. Jahnke, A. Kirsch, G.N. Müller, H._Chr. Reichel, H. Schupp, Ch. Selter, H.-J. Vollrath, J. Voigt, G. Walther and H. Winter for critical remarks to earlier drafts.     

Environmental education in a ‘green classroom’

The ‘Green Classroom’ in the Botanical Garden of Ulm is an experiential learning forum outside school. Its educational concept is based on experimental learning and is geared towards expanding biological knowledge and developing positive attitudes towards small animals such as invertebrates and insects. The attitudes of 68 school students towards small animals, before and after they visited the ‘Green Classroom’, were assessed and the answers they gave in their questionnaires were compared with those of 60 students froma control group that was not yet exposed to this learning environment. Although the students spent only one morning in the ‘Green Classroom’, some of their attitudes towards small animals improved after their visit. These studies underscore the necessity for direct observation and familiarization of the environment including small animals such as invertebrates and insects for appreciating issues related to biodiversity and conservation.     

The teacher as a ‘colony’: a case study of agentive responses to ‘colonising’ education policy in Vietnam

Neo-liberal educational policies that are being implemented globally work to foster competition among schools and teachers, as well as among children. In this situation, teachers must often come to accept the dominant representations of curricular policy developed by higher authorities. In this study, a case study design is used to describe how one school in Vietnam shifted away from this state of ‘colonisation’ by reforming the school under the framework of lesson study for learning community (LSLC). This paper subsequently argues that there is a need for school-level policies that democratise school culture and practices, resisting the negative impacts of colonising policies.     

How ‘intercultural’ is education in Greece? Insights from policymakers and educators

Schools in Greece particularly in inner-city areas, have seen a considerable increase in the number of migrant students over the past two decades. In this article, we discuss the intercultural education policy, which was introduced in 1996, in response to the migration and diversity the country has seen since the mid-1980s. We explore how policymakers and other stakeholders in the field of education have defined the notion of interculturalism and its implementation in schools. Our discussions draw on two separate studies, which used very similar tools and methods to elicit information. The article provides new insights from educators about how to respond to Greece’s diverse student population. The results not only highlight gaps between government policy and school practice, differences between traditionalists and progressivists, but also show that Greece has still a long way to go, to leave behind its ethnocentric image and fully implement intercultural education within all public schools, not only in the so-called intercultural schools.     

Rethinking ‘leadership’ in education: a research agenda

Knowledge production in educational leadership, management and administration has been, and continues to be, seduced by fads. One of the most significant trends in recent decades has been the ascendancy of ‘leadership’. In this introductory paper, I both introduce the contributions to this special issue and, more importantly, locate this collection within the intellectual tradition of disruptive Australian scholarship and the discourses of JEAH. Specifically, I argue that this collection of papers provides new ways for thinking about leadership, leaders and leading grounded in histories not bounded by historical categories, images and metaphors. This issue is however not the final word, and I encourage the reader to think with, beyond and where necessary against what is argued in the spirit of the intellectual enterprise.     

Online education as ‘vanguard’ higher education: exploring masculinities,ideologies, and gerontology

Drawing inspiration from Clegg’s [2008. “Femininities/masculinities and a Sense Self – Thinking Gendered Academic Identities and the Intellectual Self.” Gender and Education 20 (3): 209–221, 241] statement that ‘less traditional universities and areas of course provision and research might be important sites to investigate in relation to academic identity’, I undertake a single strategic case study of an expert, older, male critical educator, employed as an instructor in two ‘less traditional’, for-profit settings: one online university and one brick and mortar university. The article departs from a theoretical consideration of ‘future directions’ of three subfields: masculinities and higher education (HE) from critical and feminist perspectives, masculinities (and other identities) online (through the Internet research subfield of gender and technology), and masculinities and aging from critical and feminist gerontological perspectives. It employs the methodological strategy of ‘sketches’, arguing that these settings, which appear to position critical and feminist pedagogues in the proverbial ‘belly of the beast’, are important spaces in which to explore how a critical pedagogue navigates ‘less traditional’ HE settings.     

HIV/AIDS education in schools: the ‘unassembled’ youth as a curricular project

This paper describes the ways in which administrative structures of the state, techniques of self-government, and practices of social relations exist within HIV/AIDS curricular discourses, a critique enabled by a Foucauldian analytical frame. We argue that youth have been singled out as a particularly risky lot and are therefore prime candidates for HIV/AIDS education. We situate HIV/AIDS education as a method of neoliberal governmentality concerned with regulating the categories of health, risk, and disease in relation to youthful identities. Our aim is to expose the ways in which scientific savoir, values, freedom and restraint work in tandem and hold the potential to shape youthful lives in meaningful ways. We further hope to unmask a certain kind of politics of knowledge that goes, for the most part, unquestioned, because it is linked to normalized ideas about sexuality, morality, individual responsibility, risk, and health.     

Unwilling brides: ‘phallic attack’ as a barrier to gender balance in higher education in Nigeria

Gender balance in access to quality education is a crucial item on the agenda of the Millennium Development Goals. But this ideal appears beset by a number of barriers, especially at higher education level. This study investigated the problem of sexual harassment in the Nigerian university system as a barrier to the educational advancement of women. Specifically, the research focused on the practice of coercing female students to engage in sexual relations with male lecturers (‘phallic attack’) as a condition for scoring good grades. The research drew its sample from female students selected from 14 faculties in two Nigerian universities. The study finds that there is a relatively high prevalence of sexual harassment in these universities and this affects female students adversely. The ripple effect is that women are not given a learning atmosphere conducive to enjoying academic freedom and optimizing their potential in educational development. This contributes to widening the gaps between men and women in Nigeria. The study also finds that lack of adequate high‐quality sex education in Nigeria increases the vulnerability of younger female students to sexual harassment. It recommends the establishment of an advocacy programme as well as enlightenment campaigns to educate students, staff, authorities and parents about sexuality and sexual harassment; strengthening the penal system in the universities with powers and resources to fight the menace; and the formation of a network by women staff in various universities to work with potential and actual victims in order to expose the culprits, obtain justice and curb the trend.     

‘Lifelong education in Greece: recent developments and current trends

This article concerns recent developments and current trends in lifelong education in Greece, specifically those related with funding from European Social Fund (ESF). The analysis undertaken focuses mainly on (a) the expansion of continuing training activities in Greece during the past ten years and the development of new training organizations as a result of ESF funding, (b) the establishment and operation of the Open University and (c) the establishment of Institutes of Lifelong Learning in Greek universities.     

Graduating as a ‘native speaker’: international students and English language proficiency in higher education

The current concern about low levels of English proficiency among international students who graduate from degree courses – that students’ English language skills are not being developed during their higher education experience – reflects negatively on the quality of Australian higher education and its graduates. More careful selection of students and increased use of English language testing are among the solutions put forward. These debates over English language proficiency tend to construct English language as a skill that can be applied in any context and ‘native‐speaker’‐levels of language ability as essential for employment. Within such a formulation international students can only ever be defined as in deficit. Drawing on socio‐cultural theories of language learning and academic literacy, alternative understandings of language proficiency in internationalized higher education are explored. Improved communication skills among graduates are likely to be achieved through a better understanding of issues beyond classroom instruction, such as barriers to social integration with native‐speakers, which reveal many international students unable to access adequate levels of language experience. Without wider perspectives on the debate over English language proficiency in higher education, the many benefits of having international students in higher education institutions are obscured by negative attitudes and unrealistic expectations.     

‘It’s a life-changing point for me’: critical consciousness,collective empowerment and global awareness as activist identity change in ‘popular education’

The Youth Global Awareness Programme (YGAP) is a 2-week residential ‘popular education’ programme for young, diverse, international, labour movement activists, run by the International Federation of Workers Education Associations in Cape Town, South Africa. In this mixed method study (N = 47), we draw on the Social Identity Approach to Education and Learning. We propose that the participatory, peer-to-peer learning during YGAP leads to activist identity change, where critical consciousness, collective empowerment and global awareness develop as group norms. The first longitudinal questionnaire study found significant increases in activist identity and critical consciousness, which predicted increased collective empowerment. In the second focus group study, data were analysed with reflexive thematic analysis and two themes provide compelling evidence of learning during YGAP as identity change processes. Participants’ commonalities and differences enhanced activist identities with global awareness. Simultaneously, new knowledge, passion, hope and connection to a global activist community created collective empowerment.

     

Modern education in ‘non-Western’ societies in the light of the world systems approach in Comparative Education

The mainstream of Comparative Education may be criticized from two directions: Firstly, for what we may call its overwhelming case and country-study tradition, which tends to neglect theoretical and integrative approaches of what should be the focus of attention: defining, conceptualizing and questioning human education and its respective institutions and processes — the school, family education, adult education, etc. — as the raison d'être of educational science, of which Comparative Education is an integral part. Secondly, for largely ignoring education in non-Western countries, either by sheer ommission of non-Western perspectives, experiences and studies or by the widespread tendency to separate non-Western realities into special branches such as thnicity and education, educational problems of the Third World or multi-cultural education. The world systems approach to Comparative Education proposed here tries to remedy these shortcomings in that it offers, firstly, a radically generalized theoretical perspective, because it aims at a theory of the modern school as it emerges from a global and comprehensive concept of comparison. Secondly, it presumes that non-European countries are not the outside world to our or their European or Western experiences, but instead that they form an integral part of what in short is to be termed the modem world. Hence non-Western societies have to be integrated into a truly comprehensive framework of comparative education, the object of which is to describe, analyse and understand the world-wide existence of structurally similar yet socially differentiated and ideologically distinct nation-state controlled education systems.

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Zusammenfassung Die Hauptrichtung der Vergleichenden Erziehungswissenschaft kann zwei Ansatzpunkte zur Kritik geben. Erstens vernachlässigt ihre überwiegende Tradition der Fallstudien und Länderstudien theoretische und integrative Ansätze dessen, was eigentlich ihr Schwerpunkt sein sollte: die Definition, Konzeptualisierung und Hinterfragung menschlicher Erziehung und ihrer entsprechenden Institutionen und Prozesse wie Familienerziehung, Erwachsenenbildung usw. als die grundlegende Aufgabe aller Erziehungswissenschaft, deren integraler Bestandteil die Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft ist. Der zweite Ansatzpunkt der Kritik ist die weitgehende Nichtbeachtung von Erziehung und Bildung in nicht-westlichen Ländern, entweder aufgrund eines völligen Fehlens nicht-westlicher Perspektiven, Erfahrungen oder Studien oder aufgrund der weitverbreiteten Tendenz, nicht-westliche Erscheinungen in spezielle Untergebiete abzuspalten wie Ethnopädagogik, Bildungsprobleme der Dritten Welt oder multikulturelle Bildung. Der hier vorgeschlagene WeltsystemAnsatz der Vergleichenden Erziehungswissenschaft versucht, diese Unzulänglichkeiten zu überwinden. Hierzu wird, erstens, eine radikal verallgemeinerte theoretische Perspektive angeboten, die auf eine Theorie der modernen Schule abzielt, so wie sie sich aus einem weltweiten und umfassenden Vergleich heraus ergibt. Zweitens wird davon ausgegangen, daß außereuropäische Länder nicht eine Außenwelt für unsere oder deren europäische oder westliche Erfahrungen darstellen, sondern daß sie stattdessen integraler Bestandteil dessen sind, was man abgekürzt die moderne Welt nennen kann. Deshalb müssen nicht-westliche Geselleschaften in einen wirklich umfassenden Rahmen der Vergleichenden Erziehungswissenschaft mit einbezogen werden mit dem Ziel, die weltweit verbreitete Existenz strukturell ähnlicher, sozial und ideologisch jedoch unterschiedlicher, staatlich kontrollierter Bildungssysteme zu beschreiben, zu analysieren und zu verstehen.

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Résumé Le courant majeur de l'éducation comparée peut être critiqué de deux points de vue. Premièrement, pour ce qu'on peut appeler sa tradition excessive d'études nationales ou d'études de cas, qui tend à négliger les approches théoriques et intégrantes de ce qui devrait être son centre d'intérêt, c'est-à-dire définir, conceptualiser et remettre en question l'éducation humaine, ses institutions et processus respectifs (l'école, l'éducation familiale, l'éducation des adultes, etc.) comme la raison d'être des sciences de l'éducation, dont l'éducation comparée fait partie intégrante. Deuxièmement, on peut le critiquer parce qu'il ignore en grande partie l'éducation dans les pays non occidentaux, soit en omettant purement les perspectives, les expériences et les études non occidentales, soit par la tendance répandue qui consiste à diviser les réalités non occidentales en sections spéciales comme l'ethnicité et l'éducation, les problèmes d'éducation du Tiers Monde, ou l'éducation multiculturelle. L'approche mondiale de systèmes de l'éducation comparée proposée ici tente de remédier à ces carences en offrant, premièrement, une perspective théorique fondamentalement généralisée, parce qu'elle vise à une théorie de l'école moderne tout en émergeant d'un concept de comparaison global, complet et général. Deuxièmement, elle présume que les pays non européens ne constituent pas le monde extérieur à nos expériences européennes ou occidentales ou aux leurs, mais plutôt qu'ils font partie intégrante de ce qu'on peut appeler en résumé le monde moderne. Donc, les sociétés non occidentales doivent être intégrées dans un cadre vraiment général d'éducation comparée, dont l'objet est de décrire, analyser et comprendre l'existence de par le monde de systèmes éducatifs d'Etat structuralement similaires, mais socialement diversifiés et idéologiquement distincts.

     

‘Being’ a critical multicultural pedagogue in the art education classroom

Art educators continuously struggle to understand what multiculturalism ‘looks like’ in the art classroom. This has resulted in multicultural art education becoming superficial, in which art teachers guide students through art projects like creating African masks, Native American dream catchers, Aboriginal totems, and sand paintings, all without communicating the context of the art. This type of multiculturalism essentializes cultures, and builds Western, myopic narratives about groups of people, specifically about their ‘Art’. Critical multiculturalism is a power-focused upgrade of multiculturalism that calls for a critique of power and demands recognition that racism and other discriminations are enmeshed in the fabric of our social order. Teaching through a critical multiculturalism framework helps teachers dismantle Western, normalized narratives and produce counter-hegemonic curriculum that contextualizes culture and reveals its fluidity. In this article, the author shares a teacher action research study in which she describes what critical multiculturalism looks like in her art education classroom. The study focuses on ‘being’ a critically multicultural educator versus ‘doing’ critical multiculturalism. Such a position counters the idea that critical multiculturalism is a thing to complete, but instead is an ongoing process that rests on specific ways of thinking and considering the classroom, curriculum, and students.     

Planning,re-bordering and setting times: a comparative analysis of European and Latin American ‘education spaces’

The article compares educational regionalisation in Europe and Latin America. This analysis unveils the influence of three social phenomena in the two case studies, namely power, fields of activity and knowledge. Mostly, it focuses on the initiatives led by the European Union and the Organisation of Ibero-American States in order to implement large strategic, multi-government educational plans in each continent. The actions of international political players, the theories (or ‘ontologies’) embedded in these devices and the consequences for sub-national politics are observed.     

Theorising policy and practice in refugee education: Conceptualising ‘safety’, ‘belonging’, ‘success’ and ‘participatory parity’ in England and Sweden

Across the world, children are forced to leave their homes for far-flung destinations. This global phenomenon has particular impact in Europe, where there are now more child refugees than since World War II. Education plays an important role for children with extraordinary experiences seeking to build meaningful lives in their new context. This article offers a new theoretical approach to underpin reforms to educational policy and practice for refugees in schools in resettlement contexts in Europe. The new conceptual framing is grounded in empirical work in England and Sweden, and brings two theories together: ‘participatory parity’ (Fraser) and ‘resumption of an ordinary life’ (Kohli). Kohli’s concepts of ‘safety’, ‘belonging’ and ‘success’ have resonance with practitioners from Sweden and England as they work to meet the needs of their new arrivals. Fraser’s conceptual lenses of redistribution, recognition and representation highlight the barriers to achieving the right to inclusive education for refugee children in each context. The interdependence of both theories shapes a new framework. The theoretical understandings offered in this article have been developed with practitioners and add to the field by offering a robust moral and operational approach to shaping pedagogical principles for policymakers and educators working in resettlement communities.     

Management as ideology: the case of ‘new managerialism’ in higher education

The paper explores ideological conceptions of management, especially ‘new managerialism’, with particular reference to their role in the reform of higher education. It is suggested that attempts to reform public services in general are political as well as technical, though there is no single unitary ideology of ‘new managerialism’. Whilst some argue that managers have become a class and have particular interests, this may not be so for all public services. The arguments presented are illustrated by data taken from a recent research project on the management of UK higher education. It is suggested that managers in public service organisations such as universities do not constitute a class. However, as in the case of manager‐academics, managing a contemporary public service such as higher education may involve taking on the ideologies and values of ‘new managerialism’, and for some, embracing these. So management ideologies do seem to serve the interests of manager‐academics and help cement relations of power and dominance, even in contexts like universities which were not traditionally associated with the dominance of management.     

Conceptualising teacher education and research as ‘critical praxis’

A particular approach to epistemological action as ‘critical praxis’ is proposed where we bring together the ideas of ideology critique, self-reflective consciousness and emancipatory action. Critical praxis for educators seeks to move beyond the constraints of formal teaching, knowledge and curriculum and instead encourages communities, teachers and students to work together in producing new understandings and practices for the public good. As teacher educators, we are attempting to design a research methodology that will enable our field of practice to be theorised and to encourage a movement towards new critical understandings of teaching and learning for our students and for ourselves. This is a process of reflexive practice that endeavours to constantly and systematically interrogate our own views and to move beyond the status quo of conservative educational systems, procedures and rigidities so that knowledge is a legitimate investigation of possibility and transformation. In this article, we report a Critical Praxis Protocol to guide further development of teacher education and research. We trace our trajectory from a progressive emphasis on improving learning and professional educational practice to an emerging notion of criticality that seeks explanation with the theorising of Bourdieu. A draft habitus–field analysis is provided to indicate our current understanding of generative themes that suggest the emancipatory potential of teaching and schooling.